Generally, an apparatus for dispensing or spreading material, particularly an apparatus for top dressing terrain, more particularly, a broadcast spreading top dresser, and specifically a broadcast spreading top dresser for sand is shown and described.
Various apparatus exist for applying top dressing to the turf of golf courses, lawns, football, baseball and soccer fields, parks, recreational areas, and the like, for applying calcined clay on baseball diamonds, for sanding icy sidewalks and driveways, and for like applications of a ribbon of material at a pre-selected rate. Examples of such apparatus are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,873 which has been widely and very successfully marketed under the trademark TURFCO METE-R-MATIC and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,952 which has been widely and very successfully marketed under various trademarks. With the increasing awareness of the importance of top dressing in turf management, an increasing need exists for improved dispensers to allow the effective, efficient application of material with minimal damage to the turf and with increased ease of operation. Furthermore, with the increasing awareness of the importance of top dressing in management of golf course greens, an increasing need exists for improved dispensers to allow calculatable and repeatable dispensing of sand evenly and at a pre-selected rate.
Specifically during top dressing of selected turfs especially but not limited to golf greens, it is necessary to spread the top dressing material in an equal amount and specifically without clumps or bunches where top dressing material is dispensed at a higher rate than at other locations. Top dressers of the drop type disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,438,873 and 5,307,952 have been highly effective at applying top dressing evenly to turf. However, such drop top dressers only dispensed top dressing material across a width generally equal to the width of the top dresser itself. As top dressing often occurred during daylight, it was necessary to take the green out of play during the top dressing operation and thus the width of the dispensed top dressing material plays a major role in the number of passes required to top dress the green as well as the time required for the top dressing operation and the time that the green was out of play. Further, such drop top dressers were not very effective in spreading extremely minimal amounts of top dressing material.
Broadcast spreading top dressers have been introduced allowing spreading of minimal amounts of top dressing material over a greater width of turf. An example of such a top dresser is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,508,419, which has been widely and very successfully marketed, and which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. However, since various factors influence the rate of dispensing, including, but not limited to, the amount of material in the hopper at any given time during dispensing, dispensing at the pre-selected rate was difficult, if not impossible, to be assured. Prior attempts to obtain selected rate dispensing involved trial and error including making test measurements by placing catch patches on selected areas of the golf course green, and refusing to make adjustments once a desired rate of application was discovered. Thus, if greater rates of application were desired, multiple passes over the same area were made to reach the desired rate of application.
Thus, a need continues to exist for the application of extremely minimal amounts of material to turf and in a manner to not only reduce the number of passes required to top dress a width of such turf and to reduce the amount of time needed to perform such top dressing but in a controllable, calculated, adjustable and repeatable manner.